the house had been full of my husband and children, I didn’t notice, didn’t appreciate my oikos. Or maybe I had never had it at all. Perhaps the threads of my life were always loose, always out of my control, just waiting to slip out of reach.
‘Millicent. Missy,’ barked Angela, rousing me. ‘What are you thinking about? You were a million miles away.’
Only half a mile down the road, actually. The bottle was nearly empty and suddenly I felt I shouldn’t be around for the second. I had somewhere I needed to be.
‘I must be going,’ Gripping the marble table top, I gingerly slipped off the stool. ‘Thank you so much, it’s been lovely.’
‘I’ll come round next week,’ said Angela, picking up a corkscrew. ‘I want to talk to you about my idea. And maybe you could take Otis to the park again?’ She fixed her round eyes on me innocently.
Like I said, she wanted a babysitter. But when it came to that kind of thing, I was easy prey. I went through to the living room and mussed Otis’s hair as he sleepily watched a Peter Rabbit cartoon.
Sylvie led me back down the hallway, switching on lamps as she went.
‘You have a lovely house,’ I said, picking up my purse.
‘Thank you, sweetie,’ responded Sylvie, helping me with my coat. ‘Angie says yours is gorgeous too. Lovely to have a big house round here.’
Not if there was no one in it. ‘You should come round,’ I found myself saying. ‘I wish it looked more like this.’
‘Darling, I’m a designer – I live for that sort of thing.’ She kissed me on the cheek and I could feel tears starting, so I ducked my head and walked quickly out the door, humming Sinatra to distract myself.
Out in the dusk, I hit rush hour; commuters, heads down like mine, braced against the chill, gunning for hearth and home. I walked slowly towards my destination, torn between hope and melancholy. I’d had a lovely day, but the warmth and cheer only served to highlight the dismal prospect of my lonely walk to an even lonelier place, trying to hold on to the threads of a previous life.
After my bleak pilgrimage to take flowers to the empty space that was once Leo, I headed home, trying to cheer myself up. Maybe Sylvie would come round. Maybe I would take Otis to the park. I let myself in and switched on the lights, wincing a little at the glare. Going through to the kitchen, I put the kettle on, opened my laptop, my state-of-the-art laptop given to me by my son the archaeologist, and logged into my email.
‘Darling Ali,’ I began.
I was a virgin, of course. This was 1956 – what else could I be? An uptight nineteen-year-old, carefully reared in Kensington and Kirkheaton? I’d spent weeks hearing him traipse up and down my corridor on his way to Alicia’s room, gramophone blaring, though not entirely drowning out the sound of that grating little giggle. Once I bumped into him en route to the bathroom in my robe, and nodded awkwardly, cheeks burning with the shame of rejection, though it had never even got to that stage. Thankfully, Alicia had the decency not to ask me to let him out through my window after their late-night shenanigans. But then that just went to show, didn’t it, that she knew. I didn’t drink with her any more, but found other ways to acquire alcohol.
Despite my social and seductive limitations, I was not entirely a loner. Dutifully doing the usual round of parties and gatherings, I acquired a few friends and was even asked to a play by a young man from St Catharine’s. I put on my best green dress with a sweetheart neckline, my hair curled right for once, and cycled over to the ADC theatre to meet him. He was called Percy, but I wasn’t sure if that was his first name or last. He met me outside the theatre and under the streetlamp I could tell he would go bald in later life. The play wasn’t a play at all but a series of little skits, none of which I found very funny, though everyone else roared with laughter throughout.
After an excruciating drink in the café round the corner, Percy walked me home, which was unnecessary as I had my bicycle with me, so he pushed it while I hugged my wrap around myself and wished I’d worn something warmer. Outside the door to the porter’s lodge he lunged, letting the bicycle fall to the ground in his enthusiasm. The feeling of that tongue forcing its way down my throat, his hands digging into my shoulders and ripping my dress, made me gag. He apologized afterwards. I think the experience upset him as much as me. So I apologized as well, and he picked up my bicycle like a gentleman. Then he left for his college, promising to call on me the following week, although we both knew he wouldn’t.
Back in my room I cried a little and hung up my dress although it kept slipping off the hanger because of the tear. Then I got a bottle of sherry out of my desk and poured myself a glass, and another, and another, so that by the time Leo knocked on my door just after midnight, I was already well away.
‘Can I come in? Sorry, I’ve had rather a bad night,’ he leaned against the doorframe, blinking owlishly and waving a half-empty bottle of wine. I tightened the cord of my dressing gown, feeling thankful my hair was still done. Of course I let him in; I’d let him in the moment I first saw him across a crowded room.
We shared the rest of the bottle as Leo told me Alicia had finished with him, that she’d met someone else, a viscount from St John’s. He was so stoic about it – ‘obviously I can’t compete, he’s got a castle in Northumberland’ – that when he kissed me, I didn’t mind at all. He was so different from Percy or any of the other bumbling, self-absorbed boys I’d met. He just felt like my home.
So when he led me to that narrow, creaking bed I didn’t resist, and in fact it was I who pulled him down on top of me, to feel the weight of him, mooring me. Then there was the moment he looked into my eyes and said, ‘shall I?’ and I nodded, fiercely, because right at that moment there was no fork in the road, no other option open to me but to pursue him, us. Afterwards, we lay together in the embers, every bit entwined, him ringleting my hair on one of his fingers, and I felt replete, complete. My song, answered.
But later, when the dawn light pierced the thin curtains, I saw the blood on the sheets, felt the pounding in my head and heart, and realized what a mess I’d made of it all. Why couldn’t I be as sophisticated and experienced and elusive as Alicia and all the other girls who twirled around Cambridge as though they owned it?
While Leo slept, I sneaked out of bed to clean myself up and put on some make-up. Luckily the curls were intact. By the time he woke I was back, looking fairly decent and in control of myself despite a throbbing head. Smiling brightly, I chatted as he hastily put on his clothes. He was obviously desperate to leave and it didn’t matter at all; everything was absolutely fine. Closing the door on him, still smiling, smiling, as he assured me he’d call on me the following week, then slumping down the wall, silent tears taking the breath out of me as I thought about the blood on the sheets and the ripped dress. Jette’s purse and Fa-Fa’s shattered glasses – broken, ruined things that couldn’t be repaired.
After a while, I picked myself up and went to my desk, opening my Latin lexicon to prepare for my supervision. Luó; Gr λύω – to loose, untie, release, destroy. The message couldn’t have been clearer. Leo, Luó. I’d let go, when I should have hung on. But then, even then, I had a tiny shred of optimism, a hope against hope that he might call. He might.
Leo graduated and left Cambridge that summer, and it was two years before I saw him again.
